Does anyone know of an open-source or free alternative to Dreamweaver?

I have to give it up at work unfortunately and I need to find something thats almost just as good. I can code by hand a bit but I prefer a wysiwyg because I am a ver visual person.

Thanks!

cawebdevelopment
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2004-12-10T01:25:55Z —
#2

There's really nothing. Dreamweaver beats any free program hands down. If you're looking for a free open source html editor, I like Amaya: http://www.w3.org/Amaya/

system
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2004-12-10T11:01:38Z —
#3

Visual person? I think that has nothing to do with hand coding or not. I'm a visual person, I hand-code.

It's a matter of choosing whether you will settle for second-best code or not.

Nope, I haven't heard of any open source wysiwyg editors. Front Page might suit you fine.;)

vgarcia
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2004-12-10T14:29:53Z —
#4

mstwntd said:

Nope, I haven't heard of any open source wysiwyg editors. Front Page might suit you fine.;)

Look harder

Nvu works on OSX, Windows, and Linux, and is based on the Gecko engine so it produces valid HTML 4.01 code. And it's free. The only limitations I've seen are that you can't edit dynamic files (i.e. JSP, PHP), and that it's not at 1.0 yet. It's still fairly solid though, and if you just need to edit HTML and CSS it's a great free alternative :).

system
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2004-12-10T15:04:59Z —
#5

Interesting. I'll have to check this one out someday. Thanks.:)

vgarcia
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2004-12-10T15:21:56Z —
#6

mstwntd said:

Interesting. I'll have to check this one out someday. Thanks.:)

I played around with it for a little while, but since I can't edit JSP or XML files it's kinda useless for me at work

lanzaman
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2004-12-10T22:41:27Z —
#7

I'm no graphic designer but I am also a very visual person and tend to think in pictures so I initially used WYSIWYG editors, until I was forced to hand code and it was the best thing I ever did.

It took a bit of practice, but I now translate what is in my minds eye - or a layout in photoshop - directly to code and I get high quality, very clean code that is formatted exactly how I like it. If you can hand code a bit then it really is worth the effort to become proficient.

In fact I sometimes think that good hand coders can put a page together quicker and more correctly than those with a wysiwyg editor.

I looked around long and hard for a suitable editor and now use the open source jedit for basically all of my work it's great out of the box with php, html and css files. If you are on LINUX then Quanta and Bluefish - also for Mac OSX - are good editors (You can Google for them). I am pretty sure that the latest bleeding edge version of quanta has a wysiwyg interface built in.

However, I think if you really want a wysiwyg editor then nothing beats dreamweaver.

uk_bbc
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2004-12-15T13:44:19Z —
#8

Although is not free, I find Namo Web Editor the closest thing to Dreamweaver. If you're a beginner you will learn how to work with html faster, because it's much easy to use than Dreamweaver. And it costs about 4 times less than Macromedia’s product.

subnet_rx
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2004-12-20T19:20:06Z —
#9

I like Nvu, and I also like Quanta although I believe it only works on Linux. Then again, if your looking for open source software, there's no better place than Linux.

SitePointer
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2005-01-01T07:25:47Z —
#10

Any open source or cheaper alternatives to Dreamweaver that can edit php files?

Liquid_Bass_X
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2005-01-07T23:39:46Z —
#11

Eh, mayb Open Office by Sun Microsystems.

deronsizemore
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2005-01-08T04:38:11Z —
#12

vgarcia said:

Look harder

Nvu works on OSX, Windows, and Linux, and is based on the Gecko engine so it produces valid HTML 4.01 code. And it's free. The only limitations I've seen are that you can't edit dynamic files (i.e. JSP, PHP), and that it's not at 1.0 yet. It's still fairly solid though, and if you just need to edit HTML and CSS it's a great free alternative :).

Looks cool....

Any reason for someone like myself who uses dreamweaver to switch?

SitePointer
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2005-01-08T04:41:06Z —
#13

Open Office is not a web editor. I am already using Open Office to replace Microsoft Office.

livewire10
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2005-01-08T04:56:32Z —
#14

For me, Dreamweaver MX rules! None of those mentioned above even come close

samson
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2005-01-08T05:29:08Z —
#15

Dreamweaver is the industry standard for proffessional web projects. Its not only their wysiwyg features that make it great but also its ftp, project management, code cleanup, templating/library items, and much more.

I stronly recommend you invest in this product, it will go a long way. Nothing else on the market right now comes close.

amitgupta
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2005-01-08T06:23:02Z —
#16

SitePointer said:

Any open source or cheaper alternatives to Dreamweaver that can edit php files?

You should look at PHP Designer 2005 for PHP development. Its free & have quite some features but its just a code editor, not WYSIWYG editor. But I recommend using Zend Studio for PHP b'coz as far as I know, its the best. Its not free but there's a free personal use license available.

Teens
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2005-01-08T06:58:51Z —
#17

I've only got the academic version of Dreamweaver at the moment and I was wondering the same thing as you tony1284. The license on the academic version doesn't allow you to go commercial and the commercial version is a lot of dollars.Nvu has got me interested, gonna have a closer look at that one. Cheers vgarcia.

Dreamweaver is the industry standard for proffessional web projects. Its not only their wysiwyg features that make it great but also its ftp, project management, code cleanup, templating/library items, and much more.

I stronly recommend you invest in this product, it will go a long way. Nothing else on the market right now comes close.

Yes, you can hand-code and still use all the strong features DW offers (site management, code cleaning, templates, CSS also improved a lot in the latest version).

Namo is a inexpensive alternative, but not as strong as DW. I doubt, you will find any open source or shareware editor that compares to DW.

But you might also check out [Hotdog (although it had some stability and resource issues in earlier versions). Another cheap editor is [url="http://www.coffeecup.com/html-editor/"]Coffeecup](http://sausage.com/hotdog-professional.html).

zcorpan
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2005-01-08T14:44:30Z —
#20

If you only use the "code view" in DW then HomeSite may be interesting.